Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

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How Planned Parenthood Empowers Women

You don't have to be a heavy thinker to get the message: "We know that your boyfriend is merely using you sexually and will certainly not take responsibility if you get pregnant. Be sure you don't lose him by telling him that you're pregnant. We can help you to hold on to such a boyfriend by making sure you never get pregnant or are made swiftly un-pregnant if necessary."

How many inner-city women will say, "No thanks" to that sort of empowerment? And how is it possible to fight that message?

I'm criticizing them for simply accepting, and even playing on, the fact that women want to hold on to low-life boyfriends who will run fast if they hear that the girlfriend is pregnant. Cynical as your translation is, Mike, it isn't even what this poster actually says. For one could make your statement while urging a girl never to take up with a guy who would treat her that way and to get out of any such relationship if she's presently in one. What this poster actually does, instead, is to imply that the girl should use birth control and/or have an abortion in order to hang on to a boyfriend who uses her in this way.

And I don't have hypothetical daughters. I have real daughters. Several of them. And I would never say what you suggest that I would say. You really know nothing about cultural conservatives, do you, Mike? Or so I am forced to guess when you place such words in the mouth of a conservative mother. You have no image in your mind at all of an entirely different worldview on the subject of sex.

I think what struck me about the one I highlight in the post was the way it positively validates the view of women as mere sex objects. "So he just uses you and has no desire for responsibility. Okay, be sure whatever happens that you don't have to tell him you're pregnant! You might lose him." Encouraging the dysfunctional male-female relationships and the degradation of women that are the horrible norm in the inner city.

I kind of liked the "7 Extra Pounds" poster with the kid standing there holding his mistake (or, as Obama prefers, "punishment"). It's almost as if they're advocating post-natal infanticide.

Speaking of which, I've always thought it wholly illogical to ban one and permit the other. I want PP and their fanbase to present a consistent agenda, which would include advocating for "abortions" up to four years of age. Maybe five.

I have started writing and then erased it about 4 times. You know how repulsive this group is as well as I do. What amazes me is how they still manage to shock me. This poster is right in line with the youth focused material at their website.

When it comes to sex, all you can do is minimize the damage in the minds of PP. Talk to the people as they are, sexually uncontrollable animals, and let them know you can help them when they get into trouble. There is no reason for your life to be ruined because you slept with your loser boyfriend and got pregnant. We will help you keep that guy! Condoms and abortion will make you the most popular girl in school and Planned Parenthood is here to help!

I know you have connections with crisis pregnancy centers, Jay. What's the single thing that pro-lifers can say to the girls that makes the most impact on them? Even if they have the child rather than having it killed, how often do they get away from that lifestyle and those assumptions about their own worth(lessness) and relations to men?

I'm pretty sure that if a conservative organization put up such a poster (for example, to urge abstinence), they'd be immediately accused of promulgating vicious racial stereotypes.

Yeah, and rightfully so. The posters are really strange.

For one could make your statement while urging a girl never to take up with a guy who would treat her that way and to get out of any such relationship if she's presently in one. What this poster actually does, instead, is to imply that the girl should use birth control and/or have an abortion in order to hang on to a boyfriend who uses her in this way.

Both statements are backed by the same logic. The first statement requires women to be the virtuous objects of pursuit, and so they must avoid men who will only "use" them. The second statement requires women to be a decidedly less virtuous object of pursuit, and become even more passive.

Certainly the first statement is "better," but the logic is the same. Hence, both the posters and your criticism of the posters are playing the same game: the sexual double standard.

Mike, you're putting words in Lydia's mouth. Where did she say that women should be mere passive "objects of pursuit"? To the contrary, her statement clearly urges women to take active responsibility for their lives.

I'm am pretty certain that Lydia and other of us with daughters are teaching them that they are not objects at all. Cute rhetorical game though.

Lydia,

We have classes at our cpc that aim to teach women this very lesson. It is eight weeks of 2 hour long classes, one per week. Usually by the third class they begin to grasp that all women are not treated as they are and that they can and should expect to be treated better than that. That is usually the class when they break down and openly weep. After that it is about equipping them for a new life. They see happily married couples and talk to they, they meet with a financial adviser that helps them learn to budget, they get a party with fine china, and set a vision for their future in writing.

As to the lasting impact, well it is like all things I guess. Some women get it and change their lives. Others just cannot loose themselves from trap of their relationships. Even a bad man is a man and change is hard and unknown. But the women who change, they take off like a rocket.

No easy answers. But there are some great people that are working long and hard to undo this.

ONe counseling method that our Ex. Dir. relies on is to ask them what they would want for their daughter. They usually want their daughters or the younger sisters to have better relationships than they do. Once Lori has gotten them to see that, she asks them why they don't feel like they deserve the same things for themselves. That does start them thinking.

The woman who runs those classes says the hardest thing about the class is getting them to show up in the first place.

"If you're a philanderer, you also need to be a post-modern feminist, and PP keeps you in business."

Exactly. I've tried to explain this to feminists but there is a huge blind spot there.

As to Mike's contention about the double-standard, he gets things backwards. The "cure" for it is not to encourage girls and women to act more like dogs, but to encourage men to act less like them. The "if-you-can't-beat-em, join-em" mentality of the sexually "liberated" feminist (typified by Sex and The City, for example) has been a disaster.

The "if-you-can't-beat-em, join-em" mentality of the sexually "liberated" feminist (typified by Sex and The City, for example) has been a disaster.

Yeah, and again, this is just what the philanderer wants. The philanderer, generally, isn't an evil guy. He's just trapped in a diseased way of being, and on some level he knows that he is wrong. When he meets, for instance, a truly virtuous and principled woman who refuses to play his game, he is shamed by her--he's scared to death, since she unmasks him and exposes him for what he is. As long as he can shield himself from her soul-exposing virtue he can continue his false life, where sex is without risk or consequence, and women are disposable toys designed for his amusement and given to him for his eternal distraction. When he meets the virtuous woman, he sees his moment: will he rise to the occasion, leave behind his caddish ways, and step into responsible manhood? As long as there are women of virtue, the opportunity for love exists. Contemporary feminism seeks the destruction of the virtuous woman; it seeks either to confirm her in victimhood (the PP poster) or transform her into Carrie Bradshaw. Either way, the philanderer is confirmed in his way of life. He never risks the exposure, since he never comes into contact with virtue, for the precise reason that virtue no longer exists.

Excellent comment, Byronic. One sees that in older literature, too, and even humorously in films. (Think of The African Queen. The Bogart character may or may not have been a philanderer. He probably didn't get much chance as a grungy river-trader in Africa. But he knows a lady when he sees one.) Women have sometimes been naive about thinking they can reform an erstwhile philanderer, and much tragedy has been the result of misguided and high-minded attempts to do so. But sometimes it actually happens. And we'll get little chance to find out what men are likely to be when encouraged to virtue if virtue is never asked of them.

Women, of course, can use men too, and I wouldn't want to imply otherwise.

Ever since dating replaced courtship, it's been an uphill climb for the chaste. Things have degenerated to such a point now that the virtuous of either sex often think there's something wrong with them. Sex is a valid timekilling activity. Our culture casts the problem of human life not in terms of virtue and vice but in terms of knowledge and innocence, where innocence is equated with naivete. It's always better to know, in any case, since knowledge always brings disillusion, which is always to be preferred--let's have things as they really are! Therein is the (original) lie that innocence is just ignorance. What we've forgotten is that there is some knowledge that only innocence and chastity can possess. And that, of course, is knowledge of the Good.

Mike, you're putting words in Lydia's mouth. Where did she say that women should be mere passive "objects of pursuit"? To the contrary, her statement clearly urges women to take active responsibility for their lives.

Because if we leave behind entirely the subject/object logic, then everything both Lydia and the PP people have said becomes irrelevent. Both statements rely on that logic.

Byronicman said: "Ever since dating replaced courtship, it's been an uphill climb for the chaste. Things have degenerated to such a point now that the virtuous of either sex often think there's something wrong with them."

Well, whereas in the past, sex was regarded as a unitive act, one of Pro-Creation; nowadays, it's been deemed as nothing other than one of Recreation; i.e., a trivial orgasmic pursuit of sorts.

The sanctity, indeed, the very sacrament of marriage is an outdated, incredibly primitive and even alien concept to the spectacles of the modern world (to the very extent that it would actually regard a union amongst even the deviants).

In rather lewd language, why "buy the cow" (i.e., take the woman as spouse) when you're already milking it?

This is the rather unfortunate extent to which today's society has debased Marriage to nothing but a trifle inconvenience that should be outmoded altogether as a matter of impracticality for the modern man/woman.

I always find it baffling that men with experience in actual relationships with actual women can buy into the 'women as passive object' trope. (Though I suppose maybe there is a problem with one of my premises).

I suppose, Zippy, that they think we conservatives are trying to make women be like that by putting these "stereotypes" upon them, even if it doesn't come naturally to them. I leave it to the reader to consider how plausible it is that I'm party to such an attempt. :-)

"I always find it baffling that men with experience in actual relationships with actual women can buy into the 'women as passive object' trope."

I lay a lot of the blame for this, at least in its modern manifestation, on pornography. Men who are into porn tend to objectify women due to the nature of their 'relationships' with the 2D women in the pages or onscreen. Then when they are in actual relationships with real women, they either carry that objectification over to the relationship, or they withdraw and put up barriers to intimacy, since a real woman looks to them like some sort of alien.

Eileen McDonagh (the lady who tried to equate an unborn child with a rapist unless the woman explicitly consents to the pregnancy) attempted a review of Defending Life. She insists that Beckwith misrepresented her and Judith Jarvis Thomson's views. However, she does not even try to respond to Beckwith's refutation of McDonagh's assertion "consenting to sex is not the same as consenting to pregnancy".
Here is the link.http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/beckwith0708.htm
We should be aware of the review, but I am not sure if a response is needed, given her astounding failure to address the critical arguments.

Rob G said: "And the modern corollary to this: it is cheaper to get rid of the calf than to buy the cow."

WTF?

"I lay a lot of the blame for this, at least in its modern manifestation, on pornography."

Well, I just watched "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" yesterday on one of my fav channel CNBC and he said that if your spouse isn't willing to take risks in the bedroom, he won't be a risk-taker in the boardroom.

Also, he said that if your spouse isn't willing to let you do what you want to do, get rid of your spouse -- divorce them; you deserve better.

In short, it's not just the result of pornography, I would imagine, but also the modern thinking of this world we now live in where everything is to be thought of as some sort of business transaction for "ME" Incorporated.

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